the archives

writer // teacher // director // los angeles

a nonentity or an animal

It made me think about whether, as an author, you can […] expose your nonfictional self as a joke or a fraud or an embarrassment or a nonentity or an animal. And I think you can’t, because there is always also the author part of you, who gets the surprise explosion of stories, essays, poems crashing into you and cracking you open, like unexpected sex with Zeus when he’s a lightning bolt. It might be pleasant and erotic, or it might be a bruising assault that leaves you hunched in the corner clutching your bottle of whiskey and praying to deities you don’t believe in. Either way, you’re less a “manipulated object” and more conduit for spectacular energy.